1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a verification system for verifying whether or not use of an electronic instrument is permitted, a method, a server and electronic instrument and more particularly to a verification system whose security is intensified by employing plural verification methods, a method, a server and an electronic instrument.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, upon use of an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine, various kinds of verification methods have been used. The verification system verifies whether or not user is a person who is dully permitted to use it. As a verification method, each user carries such a medium as a magnetic card in which his ID is registered or an IC card and throws that medium into the system so as to verify himself. The system reads out his ID from the thrown medium and checks whether or not that ID is an ID registered as a person permitted to use it. Consequently, the system determines whether or not he is permitted to use the system.
According to another method, a password is inputted with an input key provided on the apparatus. Further, as a verification system having a higher security, there are verification systems employing personal feature information such as finger print, voice print, face image and the like.
However, the above-described conventional verification systems have following problems. That is, the verification system employing such a medium as the magnetic card or IC card has such a fear that the medium may be stolen or copied so that it may be used illegally by a different person and therefore, the security performance of this system is low. The verification method by password input also has the same problem, which may be generated if the password leaks out. On the other hand, although the method using personal feature information has a very high security performance, its verification system is very expensive. Further, in case of an apparatus used by many people, it takes labor and time for each person to register his personal feature information and it also takes time for verification. For the reason, the verification system using personal feature information is not so convenient for use.
Any verification system determines whether or not a person of verification object is a person permitted to use an object apparatus according to verification information such as inputted password and user ID. The verification information is different among these verification systems. Correspondingly, the security level, which is a result of verification, differs among them.
However, the conventional verification system allows a verified person to use its apparatus without any limitation regardless of the security level, which is a result of the verification once he is verified to use. For example, such an apparatus as copying machine allows the verified person to use a common resource such as consumption goods and memory region freely. However, in this case, there is such a problem that it is not favorable to permit a person verified by only a verification system having a low security level to use its system without any limitation. The reason is that low-security level verification based on password input may cause an illegal procedure.